


Little Beasts

by sisyphean_april



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22235722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisyphean_april/pseuds/sisyphean_april
Summary: "I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time."—— Little Beasts, Richard Siken
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Kudos: 26





	Little Beasts

**Author's Note:**

> This was written a long, long time ago. It takes place after S0510. Anyways, I'm excited about how Ian and Mickey's storyline has developed and I really hope they get the happiness they deserve in Season 10.

What would you like? I’d like my money’s worth.  
Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—  
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood  
on the first four knuckles.  
We pull our boots on with both hands  
but we can’t punch ourselves awake and all I can do  
is stand on the curb and say Sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.

I couldn’t get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.  
—— Little Beasts, Richard Siken

I. 

Don’t, don’t, don’t, his mind and seventeen years of south side experience chanted, but the sun was so bright his eyes were swarming with light, and there was a red-haired boy in the van behind him. The moment felt inevitable, like a bullet ripping through flesh, like action coming before thought. Mickey turned dead on his heels and ran, ducked into the van, and kissed Ian breathlessly.

I’m not afraid, he thought. I’m not afraid.

II.

Mickey got out of prison. He found himself a shitty job (bouncer at a run-down bar) , found himself a place to stay (someone’s garage) and got his shit together (mostly). He ordered trashy take-out food and cleaned himself semi-regularly. He chain-smoked but didn’t get drunk more than two times a week. He used his old cellphone. He had rough sex with strangers and avoided red-heads. He had a fucking routine. He had a life. 

Then Ian Gallagher texted his number asking to meet, and the bottom of Mickey’s world just dropped out.

Mickey never made wishes. He used to, when he was young: he wished for his mother to not shoot up, for Terry to stay in jail and for Mandy to stop crying. Once, he wished for a box of crayons. None of that ever came true, so eventually, Mickey stopped wishing. 

“Mandy texted me. Told me you got out.” Ian finally starts.

“She talk to you? Where the fuck is she?” 

“Not really, I mean. We don’t really talk that much. The county called her when you got out… Next of kin and shit. She texts me sometimes.” His voice trails off a little, sheepish, almost guilty, which is stupid: Ian knew Mandy first. Sometimes Mickey forgets, but Ian and Mandy were best friends before he and Ian even met (chasing someone while yelling violent death threats doesn’t exactly count as meeting, he thinks). “She’s good. She’s in New York.”

“She never visited.” Mickey grumbles under his breath. He turns his hands, fumbling with his fingers, running his thumb over his knuckle tattoos. The statement sounded more accusatory than he intended— Mickey would never blame Mandy for not visiting him in prison; they were Milkovichs, they don’t do that shit. She moved the fuck away and got on with her life, and Mickey was glad for her. His sister was one of the good ones. 

“Neither did I.”

“Yeah.” Mickey is getting tired. Angry, even. He doesn’t need another reminder that he was stuck in the past because he never thought of having a future while other people were out living their lives and not giving a shit. The tattoo over his heart feels itchy, feels wrong. The two things he learned in the Milkovich house was don’t care and don’t let anyone fuck you over. Mickey learned them well, and then Ian fucking Gallagher came along and he just set all that to flames. Well fuck me for giving a shit, he heard himself yell on that baseball field, and he clenches his fist so hard his knuckles show bonily. 

Ian just sits there, like a glacier of the fucking ice age. 

“Why did you want to meet, Gallagher? You have a life and stuff, don’t you?” The answer is yes, if the uniform was anything to show for it. Mickey hates how he sounds almost whiny. Ian didn’t care enough to show his face for eight long years, and now he just wants to meet up, all casual, in a fucking coffee shop like nothing ever happened, like Mickey didn’t just spend a third of his life rotting away in a cell for getting back at the crazy bitch who screwed Ian over, like they didn’t spend years clawing and fighting and kicking and fucking, like Mickey didn’t fall so much as he jumped headfirst, exchanging crushed bones for the promise of Ian Gallagher waiting for him on the other side. 

“So you don’t want to see me?”

“No.” Mickey bites, and of course it’s a lie, just like "You’re just a warm mouth to me", or "I’ll rip your tongue out of your head", or "Yeah, Mick. I’ll wait." 

Ian’s eyes widened for a second, but his expression is unreadable. Unreadable— Mickey hates that. He used to know Ian’s every expression, but now everything is a foreign language. “I,” the word comes forcefully out of Ian’s teeth, and his eyes are blazing, “I missed you.”

He says it like fuck you——not soft, not hesitant, not like a fifteen-year-old kid tentatively raising his hand to a panel of glass. “Did you?”

Mickey lived the last eight years of his life in countdown. Counting down to what, he wasn’t exactly sure. 

“No,” Mickey says, his voice thick, determinedly non-chalant. The truth weighs them both down. “You’re under my skin,” he blurts out. It is not an answer. It is an answer.

“Mick,” Ian says, “Mick, fuck.” His voice breaks, and Mickey knows.


End file.
